A Xorn can use three slam and one bite attacks per round and fight up to three opponents at the same time.

It can use camouflage to blend into stone backgrounds, gaining +5 to hide attempts. In combat, it is more likely to meld into any stone surface, then move and attack from somewhere else 1d3 rounds later, thereby gaining surprise (top of initiative order).

While passing through stone, it can be damaged by a Shatter spell as if it was an inanimate object, and a Transmute Earth spell with a spellcheck result of 20+ on the stone area it passes through will destroy it; a successful lower result will expel it from the stone and turn its body into mud, which prevents it from merging with stone and lowers its AC to 12 for 1d6 rounds while it reforms its structure to stone.

Xorns are immune against any kind of fire and cold and get a Fort save against electrical attacks, negating all damage if successful and taking half damage if failing. They always take only half damage from edged weapons.

Montag, 7. März 2016

+Tim Shorts was so nice to send me a print version of his mini-adventure The Flayed King last year, and I recently ran it at a con using Dungeon Crawl Classics. Here are my monster stat conversions, used against a party of five level 1 characters.

Ring of Kearar

Since the original Ring of Raraek that Goreth was wearing was more suited for campaign play, I changed it to something easier to hand out at a convention game:

The Ring of Kearar is sentient, but not aligned. It shimmers with a cold blue light. The wearer can make any melee weapon appear in their hand. It will form in one round; changing it to another weapon is also possible in one round. It appears as if made out of blue light. It gives no bonus to attack or damage, but the damage counts as magical.

They are translucent, with their faces, bodies and limbs strangely twisted and bent. They are usually bound to the place where they died.

Un-dead traits: immune to sleep, charm, and paralysis spells, as well as other mental effects and cold damage.

Life drain: all damage done gets added to their hit points (characters can regain lost hp normally).

Create spawn: any living humanoid killed by their life drain rises as a twisted ghost after the next sunset or after 1d4 rounds after “bleeding out” if it is currently night. “Recovering the body” is only possible before sunset and only if the respective ghost has been destroyed.

They are translucent, with their faces, bodies and limbs strangely tumid and bloated. They are usually bound to the place where they died.

Life drain: all damage done (both hp and STA loss) gets added to their hit points (characters can regain lost points normally).

Create spawn and un-dead traits: as above.

Adjusting for character level:

Both of these variants should be a good challenge for a party of 1st level adventurers if the number appearing is about half the number of characters. It will be a very difficult encounter if they don’t have magical or silver weapons (or clerics), so you might drop some hints or rumors so the players have a chance to prepare if they’re clever.

Silver weapons:

These are not readily available, but if there in a reasonably big city or market, a character may find a weapon suitable for them if they succeed on a luck check. The price should be about 30 times as much as the normal cost of the weapon.

A blacksmith might be willing to coat any weapon with silver for 20 times the normal price of the weapon; this is but temporary: after using such a weapon in a fight against a corporeal enemy, a luck check decides if the silver coating is still functional or wore out. Fighting incorporeal enemies does not tarnish the silver coating!

Magic weapons: These are never for sale. (Well, maybe if they are cursed.)